Big Era Eight a Half Century of Crisis 1900 - 1950 CE
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Big Era Eight A Half Century of Crisis 1900 - 1950 CE Landscape Teaching Unit 8.5 The Causes and Consequences of World War II 1939 – 1945 CE Table of Contents Why this unit? 2 Unit objectives 2 Time and materials 3 Author 3 The historical context 3 This unit in the Big Era timeline 5 Lesson 1: Who was Prepared for War? 6 Lesson 2: Periodization Debate: When did World War II Begin and End? 13 Lesson 3: War Propaganda: Messages and Media used to Promote Nationalism 15 Lesson 4: Military Technology 25 Lesson 5: Turning Point in Global Warfare Debate: Attacks on Civilians 30 Assessment 33 This unit and the Three Essential Questions 34 This unit and the Seven Key Themes 34 This unit and the Standards in Historical Thinking 35 Resources 35 Correlations to National and State Standards and to Textbooks 36 Conceptual links to other lessons 37 World History for Us All A project of San Diego State University In collaboration with the National Center for History in the Schools (UCLA) http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/ World History for Us All Big Era 8 Landscape 5 Why this unit? All the challenges of the 1920s and 1930s may have led inevitably to a new round of conflict. In some sense, World War II was a continuation of the tensions over resources and markets that partially caused the first war. Fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935. Japan, seeking to expand beyond Korea and the Pacific islands, invaded Manchuria in 1931, and began to conquer mainland China in 1937. In Europe, Fascist Germany’s aggression against its neighbors, first Austria and Czechoslovakia, then Poland, led it in 1939 into war with France and Britain. The conflict soon became global. Nazi Germany attacked the communist Soviet Union in 1941, and Japan, Hitler’s ally, attacked the US at Pearl Harbor, Hawai’i, and Great Britain at Singapore on December 7, 1941. World War II was fought in Europe, the Soviet Union, North Africa, West Africa, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Eventually, the sheer weight of resources and human numbers ranged against the Fascist alliance made the difference. Britain and France fought with the support of both soldiers and civilians from colonies and former colonies throughout the world; the US concentrated its wealth, industry, and citizenry on the war effort; and the Soviet Union mobilized huge human and material resources with brutal efficiency. The Allied Powers invaded Germany from both east and west in 1945, and Hitler died in his Berlin bunker. Japan surrendered after the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August. In human terms, World War II was even more costly than the first conflict. Perhaps 60 million people died, or three percent of the world’s population. This time, most of the casualties were civilians. Weapons such as bombers and rockets brought warfare into the centers of cities. Mobilization for war was even more “total” than in the first war, particularly in Germany and the Soviet Union. The horror of the war found its most potent symbol in the Nazis’ systematic murder of almost six million Jews. This landscape unit gives students the opportunity to debate the causes of the global conflict using historians’ rather than politicians’ tools. Students will practice analyzing primary sources, mostly photographs, posters, and speeches. Moreover, students will analyze secondary source data on national military preparedness and a timeline of the creation and use of military technology during World War II. Finally, students will debate the consequences of aerial attacks on civilian populations during World War II. Unit objectives Upon completing this unit, students will be able to: 1. Analyze statistical data and speeches to compare military expenditures and role of nationalism as causes of the Second World War. 2. Analyze textbook presentations of starting and ending dates for the Second World War to discuss periodization of the first half of the twentieth century 3. Compare propaganda posters used by combatant countries during the war to identify similar techniques used to demonize enemies http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/ Page 2 World History for Us All Big Era 8 Landscape 5 Time and materials This unit can be completed in five class periods. The only materials required in this unit are index cards, poster board, and pencils. Author Sharon Cohen teaches world history at Springbrook High School in Silver Spring, Maryland. She was a member of the Advanced Placement World History Test Development Committee from 2002 to 2006 and a founding member of the editorial board for the e-journal World History Connected. In addition to writing curriculum units for World History For Us All, Ms Cohen also wrote the curriculum guide for the website accompanying the video series Bridging World History. Various materials authored by Ms Cohen were commissioned by the College Board for the Advanced Placement World History program. The historical context In 1919, when the Treaty of Versailles was signed, many peoples in the world hoped that there never again would be such a destructive global military conflict. Unfortunately, their hopes were dashed. Furthermore, the devastation caused by the Great Depression probably surprised them as well. Nor would many of them have realized that the increased military expenditures that helped mitigate the economic effects of the Great Depression would, in fact, be a decisive rearmament for another world war. The increase in spending for military supplies and training sparked reactions among the stronger nations of the world. This was true especially of the fascist governments of Germany, Italy, and Japan, whose military buildup revealed their expansionary goals. Although the rearmament by the Germans, Italians, and Japanese did not provoke an immediate military response from the winners of the First World War, diplomatic concerns were expressed through the League of Nations. At first, the major states like the US, France, and Great Britain engaged in massive arms production to promote economic growth and to begin some military protection against the rearmament by the fascist leaders. In all of the economies negatively affected by the Depression, industrial growth, aided by new military contracts, helped put workers back in factories to make weapons and supplies. The Communist state of the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin expanded its military also in response to the perceived threats from Nazi Germany’s actions against its European neighbors. Thus, nationalism, militarism, and industrialism were key factors, similar to their roles in causing the First World War, to beginning the second. The involvement of civilians in the Second World War also mirrored their participation in the first one. Both colonial peoples and citizens of free nation-states fought in and supported the war efforts, but a substantial amount of persuasion was used by their governments to convince them to enlist in the military, buy war bonds, work in factories, and accept the sacrifices required of them. Common images of soldiers as masculine ideals and women as strong helpmates appeared in propaganda posters. Although many citizens felt inspired by nationalism to rally behind their http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/ Page 3 World History for Us All Big Era 8 Landscape 5 country’s involvement in the war, others needed to be convinced that their enemies were dangerous and required military actions. In order to invoke emotional responses, most of the nation-states fighting in the war hired graphic artists and film makers to rally support by depicting the enemies as inferior and sometimes even like monsters or animals. Often, national leaders identified the enemies as opposing nation-states, but just as frequently the demonized groups were domestic populations such as Jews or Roma in Nazi-occupied territories or people of Japanese descent in Canada and the United States. The constant use of propaganda resulted in governments becoming experienced in using communication technologies to shape public opinion. The heightened nationalistic messages unfortunately also led to the support of a war that resulted in millions of deaths and widespread environmental destruction. If the causes and effects of the Second World War are pretty clear, then why do historians disagree about its periodization? An easy answer might be that historians from different countries might want to portray their own governments as more or less actively engaged in preparing for war in the years after the First World War ended in 1919. Or, historians more concerned with presenting a narrative of their own national history might suggest through a particular ending date that their own country played a key role in bringing about an end to the fighting. A more complicated answer to the periodization question reveals an essential task of historians, i.e., analyzing the past by demarcating time periods to highlight developments they deem important. The arguments that historians develop rely on selecting evidence from events and then making their arguments. For example, it might be our task as students of history to debate whether Japanese troops invading China in 1937 or German troops invading Poland in 1939 mark the beginning of the Second World War. We also need to marshal evidence of the causes of those events as well as their effects to determine which one could be considered the one that led most clearly to the other parts of the global conflict. http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/ Page 4 World History for Us All Big Era 8 Landscape 5 This unit in the Big Era Timeline http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/ Page 5 World History for Us All Big Era 8 Landscape 5 Lesson 1 Who Was Prepared for War? Activities Activity 1: Armaments. A. Using tables of military spending, students analyze, in a whole class discussion, Japan’s military strength during the 1930s and 1940s and the risks it took in invading China.